and that Señor Martos has not quitted it since the previous night. Try and realise to yourself a crowd from Clerkenwell Green surging and yelling angrily in the open space before Westminster Hall, a battalion of the Coldstreams keeping watch and ward on the faithful Commons, and Mr. Speaker, for reasons of personal security, compelled to have a shakedown in the House! At half-past three o'clock the flag is run up to the head of the staff on the roof, but it droops limp and woebegone in the wet. The Assembly is in session. The waiting crowds increase; the windows commanding a view of the Palace are filled, and the pavements of the streets contiguous are black with anxious loiterers, in spite of the detestable weather. News of what is going on inside the Chamber escapes by driblets; as soon as a Deputy or a reporter comes out he is button-holed and interviewed. "The Radicals hold firm," says one, and there is a howl of rage, and the chattering _flâneurs_, who linger on the pavement at a safe distance, stir their heels with a rare unity of sentiment. "Devil take the hindmost!" is the motto of these dignified burgesses of Madrid when a cry of danger is raised; bang go the shutters against the shop-windows in a jiffy. At one period the attitude of the crowd immediately opposite the entrance of the Palace boded ill; cries of "Viva la República Federal!" and "Death to the Radicals!" were raised, and Señor Estévanez, the Civil Governor of Madrid, was obliged to come out and speak to his pet lambs, and pacify them with the assurance that the Federal Republic was safe. Five mounted Civil Guards took up their stations at the mouth of the Calle de Turco after this, and stood there silent, statue-like, with drawn swords in their gauntleted grip, until day had melted into twilight, and twilight into night. These five cavaliers, in their heavy cloaks, blacker than the darkness around, had really something supernatural in their grisly quietude as they rested stock-still in their saddles. Their mission was ominous of evil; they were there an ugly index of what was feared. Had they found it necessary to clap spur to their horses and plunge upon the mob, I would not have given much for their lives. Those five "lost sentinels" were sure to have been picked off before their comrades on foot could have sallied from the adjacent building to their rescue. Sinister-looking fellows, in jackets and fur caps, with rifles slung across their shoulders, were not ensconced in the street-corners in easy range without a purpose.